Postmortem

Detective Marino is a tough urban police detective. Scarpetta describes Marino as a genre stereotype of a 50-something detective: “a crude, crass gumshoe who probably had a foul-mouthed parrot for a pet and a coffee table littered with Hustler magazines” (13). Marino has a number of prejudices that color his investigative techniques and his professional demeanor. He makes several antigay comments throughout the novel. He also has class resentment from growing up without a lot of money, making him suspicious of the upper-class and highly educated. This leads him to several incorrect assumptions in the case, most notably in immediately casting Matt Petersen as a suspect in his wife’s murder.

Marino worked in New York City before coming to Richmond, and being a Yankee sets him apart from the Southern men’s clique. As a result, he disregards their admonitions to isolate Scarpetta from the investigation and instead chooses to collaborate with her. However, Marino and Scarpetta’s relationship is tense and unstable. Marino is frequently cold and gruff with Scarpetta, leading her to wonder “if he didn’t like women, or if he just didn’t like me” (6). Scarpetta, for her part, dislikes Marino’s impulsive, non-intellectual approach to police work, at one point stating dismissively, “The guy’s only advantage in life is he’s big and white, so he makes himself bigger and whiter by carrying a gun and a badge” (83). However, his intuitive approach to investigation makes him the ideal counterpart for Scarpetta, who focuses on scientific rigor, contributing to the novel’s examination of Procedural Rigor Versus Intuition.

Marino comes to value Scarpetta’s insight into the investigation, although he never states it outright. He goes out of his way to share evidence with her and ask her opinion about the murderer’s motives. He is also protective of Scarpetta. He worries about who might be setting her up as a scapegoat and takes proactive steps to prevent her from harm. This comes to a head at the end of the novel when Marino kills the murderer as he is attacking Scarpetta. Although they never become close during this first novel in the series, Scarpetta and Marino share a moment of camaraderie in the final chapter when they both celebrate Wingo’s discovery that Amburgey has tampered with evidence and will be removed from office.

Bill Boltz is an antagonist and secondary character in Postmortem. Boltz is the Commonwealth’s attorney, or public prosecutor, in Richmond, a handsome and successful lawyer. Although initially presented through Scarpetta’s romantic connection to him, the representation of his character shifts radically over the course of the novel. Initially, he is presented as just another member of the boy’s club. Like the others, he seems to be deliberately isolating Scarpetta in their professional environment despite their personal connection. He does not acknowledge Scarpetta at the Petersen crime scene, on the street, or in the tense meeting with Amburgey.

This behavior makes Scarpetta “hurt and a little angry” (102), making the revelation that they are having a casual relationship more impactful. In their private moments, he seems sweet and charming, completely different from the icy demeanor seen in the earlier public interactions. He quickly bonds with Lucy, and she is soon “staring with open adoration at Bill” (122). However, the narrative suggests that Scarpetta is subconsciously aware that he is not entirely trustworthy as “our mutual attraction remained but a wall had gone up” after they have sex (131). She attributes her withdrawal to the fact that his wife died not long before, but later admits that there may have been more to the distance she puts between them.

The cold and calculating aspect of Bill’s personality in the early chapters proves to be foreshadowing for the revelations about him in later chapters. When Abby accuses Bill of drugging and raping her, Bill effectively confirms the accusations by not directly denying them to Marino and leaving town afterward. These revelations cause Scarpetta to reevaluate her encounters with Bill. She thinks about how, when they had sex, “he was so rough. He was hurting me. […] It was as if he’d become somebody else (224). Scarpetta also grows suspicious of Bill’s wife’s cause of death. She had ruled it death by suicide, but she wonders if Bill might have contributed to it, although she does not have evidence. In the end, Bill’s status as an antagonist is exposed, but he is revealed to be uninvolved in the crimes they are investigating.

Abby Turnbull, an investigative journalist, is a minor character in Postmortem. She is “so peculiar looking she [is] striking” with brown hair and green eyes (200). She is a hard-working, award-winning crime reporter in Richmond. Initially, Scarpetta has a low opinion of the dogged reporter. She describes how “the infamous […] reporter Abby Turnbull had demonstrated her usual brass by […] clubbing my staff with the Freedom of Information Act in an unsuccessful attempt at getting copies of the autopsy records” (8). The language suggests that Abby can be a bully in attempting to get what she wants for a story. When Scarpetta’s database is hacked, she even considers the possibility that Abby was involved. She thinks that Abby might be so “indecent” as to hack the database to get scoops for her reporting.

However, Scarpetta comes to recognize Abby’s qualities as a reporter and eventually is forced to reevaluate her character as well. As Amburgey points out, “[Abby] doesn’t win prizes for being passive” (113), and Scarpetta comes to doubt Bill’s claims that Abby is “poison.” Her reevaluation of Abby comes when Abby tells Scarpetta and Marino about what happened when she went to dinner with Boltz, when she was profiling him for the newspaper. Abby describes how he drugged and raped her while offering her belief that Boltz would “ruin her” if she reported the crime to the police. Scarpetta immediately believes Abby and sympathizes with the trauma she has experienced. She begins to see Abby as a determined woman like herself, doing her job diligently and well.

Abby becomes a greater focus of the narrative when the murderer kills Abby’s sister Henna while targeting Abby because of her news coverage of the serial murders. She agrees to help set a trap for the murderer by collaborating with Scarpetta and Wesley to write a news story deliberately designed to trigger the criminal, demonstrating courage and a dedication to the truth. At the end of the novel, Scarpetta and Abby have bonded, and Scarpetta has come to see Abby as a “crusader” who, like Scarpetta herself, uses her professional skills to pursue justice.